Come What May
by ZoeDrummond
Summary: Kurt is faced with a devastating diagnosis and must make the most of his time left with his friends, family, and most importantly, his fiancé, Blaine.
1. Chapter 1

Blaine could hear his own pulse in his ears. He thought he could feel his blood pumping rapidly behind his eardrums, threatening to build the pressure in his forehead until it burst open.

"Blaine. Say something." Blaine suddenly found himself just as he had been only moments earlier (although who knew how much time had passed while the blood rushed to his head?), in the cold plastic chair in the hospital waiting room. He looked around to gaze into the face of his fiancé, who had just spoken to him. "Please, just say something, Blaine. I'm going to be worried for _your_ health if you don't say something to me." Kurt's angelic lips curved into a playful smile, his head cocking slightly to the side the way it did when he teased, but it was an act, Blaine could tell. He knew his fiancé, the love of his life. Kurt was terrified. He had every right to be. Blaine knew he had to comfort his man, and be his rock if they were going to make it through this together. He reached out and grasped Kurt's clammy, porcelain hand in both of his and looked his lover squarely in the eyes, lost for a moment in the depth of his gaze.

"This is going to be fine, Kurt. We'll fix this together. I love you." Kurt let out a heavy breath in obvious relief, and, without hesitation, kissed his fiancé on the lips, passionately and without reservations. Blaine reciprocated wholeheartedly, and thought, for a moment, that he could make this right.


	2. Chapter 2

They held hands in the cab ride home. It hadn't seemed right to take the subway home, surrounded by so many people bustling home from work, unaware, unconcerned with what devastating event had just been introduced into the lives of these two young men that had hours ago known only that they loved each other and were going to get married. Nothing else had been decided about their lives or their careers yet. Just that they would spend them together. Their whole future had been tossed up into the air.

They remained silent as they climbed the stairs to the apartment that they shared with Rachel and Santana. Rachel was in Lima with Finn, having left earlier in the afternoon to take a three-day weekend with her boyfriend. They didn't know where Santana was, but she wasn't here. She'd been spending a lot of nights at Dani's lately. Remaining silent, Blaine went to the kitchen and began making coffee. It was 6 o' clock in the evening by now, but he planned to stay awake all night, all week, if that's what it would take to get a handle on this situation. He scooped coffee grounds into the filter and could see his hands shaking. Kurt stood watching his fiancé's back, watched his bowed head as he focused on the coffee machine. Blaine closed the lid and pressed the 'on' button, and for a moment they both waited in silence for the familiar gurgle and crackle of the coffee maker doing its job. When the sound finally came, the first drop of coffee searing into the pot with a hissing noise, Blaine spun abruptly, beginning, "Kurt, what are we going to do, we need to start calling people, your dad, and Carole, oh my god, _your dad, _how-"

"Stop." Kurt didn't say it harshly but Blaine fell silent all the same. "I'm not telling anyone anything over the phone. Or until we've made a few decisions."

Blaine nodded and rubbed his temples, closing his eyes with exhaustion that had nothing to do with his physical energy. "What do you have in mind?"

"I'm going to let nature take its course." Kurt waited for a reaction, watching Blaine register what he was telling him.

"You're going to let nature- what does that mean? We're going to try everything possible to fix this, you're going to get chemotherapy or radiation or-"

Kurt interrupted him a second time, "No! I'm not, Blaine. There's no point in putting myself through all that agony when we know it won't work! The doctor said himself that any of that stuff would be a Hail Mary pass, just prolonging my life, not saving it." Kurt seemed eerily calm for having just received a death sentence. Blaine was struggling to keep himself together by this point, tears streaming down his face, his chest heaving as he tried to control his violent intake of breath. Kurt continued, "I would rather spend what time I have left enjoying my life and the people I love. Can't you see that there's no use in giving myself an extra few months or however long something like chemotherapy would give me, just to be miserable and sick all the time?"

Blaine couldn't believe what he was hearing. Deep down he knew that Kurt was right, but he refused to believe that his lover's only options were to either die sooner in a small amount of pain or slightly later, in a great deal of pain. Contemplation of either was unbearable. He was looking at Kurt's beautiful face, his perfect forehead, his perfect nose, his perfect cheeks, his perfect chin, and _his lips. _He couldn't look at those lips without believing in immortality, for Kurt's lips couldn't age or die, couldn't cease to exist as they did right now.

"Blaine. I need you to support me on this. That's the only way I'm going to get through this." Kurt looked almost pleadingly at his lover. Blaine saw the depth in his expression. He couldn't bear the thought of Kurt in pain, and knew that his deepest and most potent desire in the world was to alleviate Kurt's suffering. In a way, it always had been. It had been until they'd found with one another a place where they didn't have to suffer anymore. Wordlessly moving to embrace his love, his soulmate, enveloping Kurt in his arms and feeling the embrace warmly returned, Blaine vowed to himself that they would find that place again.


	3. Chapter 3

"Dad, Carole, sit down, please, I have something to discuss with everyone. It's no big deal, I just need to talk to you for a moment." Kurt ushered his father and step-mother to sit down on the couch next to Rachel, where she sat looking bewildered, glancing over to her boyfriend, and Kurt's step-brother, Finn, who looked equally baffled sitting in the armchair in Burt and Carole's living room. Blaine hovered next to Kurt, unwilling to further confirm that what Kurt was about to say was true. Burt spoke first.

"What's going on Kurt, why have you got us all here? Is there some big showcase at NYADA or something, because I told you I'd take the time off for anything, you don't have to make a big family meeting out of it…" Kurt didn't think he could look his dad in the eye without losing his cool, so he kept his eyes averted from his father's face and commenced with the speech that he'd been practicing for the whole 48 hours that it had taken to gather all of the people who most mattered in his life into one room.

"I just want to say, firstly, that I love you all. You all mean so much to me, and and I just wanted to make sure you know that, without any doubt, you are all in my heart, immovably." Kurt had barely finished speaking before Finn burst out, almost yelling, "What's going on, man, why did you you need to say this right now? Is there something wrong?" The rest of the party looked urgently from Kurt to Finn, and back again, clearly sharing Finn's concern. Kurt felt his facade slipping, and pushed forward with his speech,

"The reason I brought you all here tonight is because I recently got some news. I've been feeling a little unwell lately and I went to the doctor, had a few consultations… Long story short, I have cancer." There was suddenly a cacophony of voices, of loved ones yelling "WHAT?!" and "How long have you known?" and "What kind of cancer?!" Kurt's already-frazzled mind couldn't reconcile which comment came from who, and he let the voices wash over him and die down before attempting to speak again.

"Look, everyone, I know this is pretty shocking news, and I don't want to sugar-coat it. I have a brain tumor. It's something called a malignant anaplastic meningioma. It's an especially aggressive, almost non-treatable type of cancer. I have, if I'm lucky, maybe three years." Kurt paused for a moment, truly letting the truth of his words sink into his own mind for perhaps the first time since his diagnosis. He was dying. Rachel burst into tears and buried her face in her hands. Finn sat like a statue in his chair, his eyes fixed on Kurt as though still trying to comprehend what he had said. Carole was in tears herself, but in better shape than Rachel; immediately after Kurt fell silent, she rose from her seat to embrace him in a hug he returned gladly, letting himself almost relax for a moment while she rubbed circles into his back. Over Carole's shoulder Kurt looked at his dad, who was sitting on the couch still, rubbing his hands together, rubbing his eyes agitatedly, before finally standing up to look straight at his son. Kurt felt his body tense once more and gently pulled away from Carole, positioning himself straight in front of his father, this time purposefully locking eyes with him. Burt held his gaze, and said, his voice strong and clear,

"How long have you known?"

"Dad, I-"

"Kurt Elizabeth Hummel, how long have you known?!" Burt's voice finally cracked on these last words and Kurt grabbed his father, almost violently, around the shoulders, grabbed him into an embrace. Burt responded immediately, wrapping his arms fiercely around his boy, and breaking down into the tears that had been inevitable, the violent sobs which shook him and shook Kurt as he stood there, comforting his heartbroken father. Carole stood tentatively next to the pair, her hand on Burt's shoulder. Blaine had moved to the couch and was holding Rachel while they both wept unashamedly. Finn sat still in the same position in his chair, silent and staring, though his watering eyes betrayed him.

"I've known something was wrong for a few weeks, but I only got the diagnosis on Friday. I'm sorry, Dad, I should've called, I was just scared, I didn't know how…" Kurt broke off here, acknowledging for the first time that he was the only one in the room with dry eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

Kurt was sure he'd never seen a more beautiful day in his life, and thought it likely that he never would. He stood by the window of the luxurious hotel room, gazing down over the park in which he and Blaine would soon be wed, and, just as he felt he could not be more content, he felt his Blaine wrap his arms around his shoulders, and whisper into his ear,

"Good morning, love." Kurt smiled and leaned into Blaine's neck before turning to kiss him, his hands tenderly grasping his face. The two kissed deeply and almost lost themselves right there in the sunlight, until Blaine pulled away to smile widely and say "I love saying good morning like this. Can I get you anything? How do you feel today?" Blaine's expression turned to slight concern, as it always did these days. Kurt didn't mind. He'd known since the day he was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, one year ago, that Blaine would feel the pain as deeply as he would. Looking into Blaine's beautiful face, Kurt replied,

"I feel wonderful this morning, because I have you. And that's all I need." Blaine's eyes filled with tears as he beheld his soon-to-be husband, his smooth, pale skin, his silky chestnut colored hair that he wore gelled high but which lay adorably messy atop his head in the morning. He looked into Kurt's eyes and saw the purple shadows that circled them, the result of months of sleepless nights in which he would lay awake, or toss and turn because of the steadily worsening headaches that had sent him to the hospital in the first place. Kurt's good days meant that he could work through his headache, as he continued to attend classes at NYADA and work part-time under Isabelle Wright at Vogue. His bad days were almost unbearable; as the his brain tumor grew in malignancy, his headaches became more frequent and vicious, and, at their worst, a single headache could leave Kurt blinded, dizzy, nauseated to the extreme, at times ready to tear out his own eyeballs if only to distract from the knife being repeatedly stabbed into his frontal lobe… He had access to all kinds of pain killers, of course, but they would often leave him loopy and not as present as he wanted to be, knowing he had only a finite amount of time left with those he loved.

In the year since his diagnosis Kurt had gradually let all of his friends and acquaintances know about his situation, and was thankful that now, though he only had even less time to live, that he had finally finished the portion of his life that had had to be spent informing his loved ones of his impending death. Kurt had assumed that after telling his dad the bad news everyone else would seem like a piece of cake, but he'd been wrong about that. His father was distraught, of course, and had spent hours after the initial shock insisting that Kurt go over every single medical detail with him until he was sure that nothing could be done. After this point, Burt had turned his attention to the emotional wellbeing of his son and refused to be comforted when it was Kurt who was in pain. Kurt would later reflect regularly on what a rock his father had been to him, not only through this ordeal, but throughout his entire life. Carole and Finn had, of course, followed suit and looked out for Kurt as much as they could, traveling more often than was really necessary from Lima to New York with Burt to make sure they appreciated any time left they were given.

Kurt's friends were all struggling, without the years of emotional maturity and previous experiences of loss to give them Burt's sensible stoicism. Though Kurt loved Rachel, Santana, Mercedes, Sam and all of his other friends back at McKinley High, he had found himself exhausted and overwhelmed after each meeting with his old pals. Rachel at least, had Finn to temper her emotional neediness, and still, she had yet to look at Kurt without tearing up, to the point where Kurt heard himself say sharply one morning, "Honestly, Rachel, I just offered you some orange juice, there simply cannot be anything to cry about." Santana had made a proud stab at being her old self when Kurt told her his news, snapping, "Look, Lady Hummel, just because you've got a Louboutin sized tumor in your perfectly coiffed skull doesn't mean I can miss my 4pm dance class, so if you wanna wax poetic over the fact that you now have less time to design suits made out of Elton John's gift-wrapping room, count me out." Santana had said all this while shoving on a jacket and gathering her purse, but when she turned to face the door she crumpled and burst into tears with her hand on the doorknob. Mercedes had been immediately sensitive, of course, as had Sam, but they had both needed Kurt's shoulder to cry on while he patted their backs, almost bored of the repetitiveness with which this event had taken place since he had been diagnosed.

"What are you thinking about, babe?" Blaine's voice tickled softly into his soon-to-be-husband's ear. Kurt cut off his recollections of his friends' reactions and behavior towards his illness and focused on the love of his life who still stood with his arms wrapped around his shoulders, gazing out on the trees as they cast long shadows over the grass. Kurt made his voice light and sing-song, not having to force it for the first time in months.

"I'm just thinking about us. Today is just for us."


	5. Chapter 5

"Are you ready for this, bro?" Finn looked over Kurt's shoulder into the full-length mirror, surveying his brother's crisp grey suit. The muted grey color of the suit had shocked Finn at first, who had grown accustomed to his brother's bolder fashion choices, but the lavender shirt, shoes and corsage that Kurt had chosen to accompany the outfit had put his fears to bed; no matter what the circumstance, this was still Kurt, after all. It comforted Finn to know that some things never changed.

As Kurt inspected himself in the mirror his expression shifted, appearing to honestly consider the question. He turned away from his reflection to face Finn, now fiddling with his own black tie, and said quietly,

"You know, I really am." Finn responded with a friendly, if offhand smile and nod, now fully engrossed in the tie he could not seem to get right. Kurt watched him fondly as he struggled, planning to take pity and help him if he didn't manage it in the next few moments. Burt, however, beat him to the punch, poking his head into the hotel room that had been designated for Kurt's half of the groomsmen, and spotting Finn, rushed to him with a chuckle, saying,

"Here kid, you've got yourself all tangled up here." Finn looked glad to surrender his tie to Burt and glanced sheepishly over to Kurt, who didn't bother to hide his amused grin before turning back to the mirror to give his hair a final approving look. _Well, that's one thing I'll always have going for me, I guess, _Kurt thought as he turned his head at a slight angle, _my hair looks great. Ten pounds skinnier than I'd like to be… and the circles under my eyes are horrendous. But the hair never lets me down. _Kurt caught himself staring intently into the mirror, and suddenly found himself laughing abruptly at the absurdity of his thought process. Here he was, dying, and about to marry the love of his life, two situations that should have been taking him full throttle through the gamut of human emotion, and he was congratulating himself on his hair. The wave of giddy laughter disappeared as soon as it came, but it had been enough to startle his father and brother out of their intimate pow-wow over the engineering dynamics of a windsor knot.

"What are you laughing at? Give your old man a break, I haven't tied one of these things since my own wedding day!" Burt finished Finn's tie with a satisfied pat and started on his own. This perspective proved less challenging, evidently, as Burt tied the thin black tie expertly, looking at his son as he did so. "I'm so proud of you, Kurt. Your mom would have been too. She is." Kurt felt his chest rise with emotion, and had to look away as he said, a little too breezily,

"Jeez, Dad, are you trying to make me cry?" Burt chuckled again, and said quickly,

"Alright, alright, I won't go all mushy on you just yet, I have to save something for the speeches." Kurt forced himself to chuckle as well, but felt bad that he'd brushed off his father's words. That wasn't like him.

"I'm sorry Dad, I didn't mean to cut you off like that… It's just that these days-"

Burt gently finished his sentence for him, "I know, these days everyone is getting sentimental on you, and you have to be the strong one."

Kurt released a heavy, relieved exhale, "_Exactly_, I just- I mean, I don't want to be a downer, ever, and I promise, Dad, I'll try not to be…"

Burt watched his son's face closely. "But?"

Kurt hesitated. "But I don't know how much longer I can be the strong one for everyone else. I'm getting weaker… I wish it wasn't true but I can feel it happening."

Burt's face fell, but, interpreting Kurt's words, he seemed to pull himself together. Resting a firm hand on his shoulder, Burt bowed his head slightly to level his eyes with his son's and said softly, "Hey, don't worry about me, or anyone else Kurt. Just take care of yourself, ok? That's all that will make me happy. I know that no matter what I say you're still gonna worry about everyone else. That's just who you are, Kurt, and I'm so proud of the kind of person you've become." Kurt didn't know what to say, as he often hadn't when his father came out with his pearls of wisdom. "Besides," Burt continued, "You have Blaine to make sure you're looking after yourself." Kurt gave his dad a look, the same look he gave his father whenever he realized that the man understood a lot more than he gave him credit for. Burt recognized this look. "Kurt, anyone can see you two and see that you're in love. I know I wanted you to put the brakes on things before getting engaged, you two being so young and all. But… I understand that things are different now, and even though… even though I wish it was under better circumstances, I've learned that I was wrong in thinking you didn't have enough experience, that you couldn't hack it in such a big commitment. I know now that Blaine will stand by you though anything. I couldn't have wished for a better parter- a better _husband_- for you."

Finn had slipped out of the room long ago, and, although the two Hummel men were alone they both battled to keep the moisture from spilling out of their eyes. They succeeded, if only because Kurt's cell phone rang at that moment, bursting the bubble of emotion that had momentarily swallowed the room. Startled, Kurt fumbled inside his jacket pocket and retrieved his phone, not looking at the screen before jamming it to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Kurt! We're ready for you, let's do this!" Sam's voice on the other end of the line was excited, or as he'd exclaimed upon arriving at the hotel that morning, "I'm pumped!"

Kurt listened to Sam's description of who would be where to do what when, looking at his own watch as he did so, and finally responding, "Great, see you in a minute. Tell Blaine I can't wait to see him." before hanging up.

Blaine rushed to Sam's side, trying to speak quickly before he hung up the phone, "How's Kurt? Does he feel okay? Let me talk to him-"

"Whoa, whoa, no talking before the ceremony, it's bad luck or whatever. Besides he hung up already. But he said he's excited to see you."

Sam closed his cell phone and looked at his best friend, who, satisfied with Kurt's message, was anxiously checking his black gelled hair in the mirror, straightening his cerulean bowie for the thousandth time, and said, "Blaine, bro, stop worrying, you look super hot. Seriously, if you weren't about to become a married man I'd bang you, any day." Sam gave a huge grin with his plump lips as Blaine's reflection gave Sam an unconvinced glare, his brow furrowing further. Sam raised his eyebrows, "C'mon man, you got this! This is you and Kurt! Don't get all freaked out, it's gonna go great."

Blaine turned from the mirror to look warmly at his close friend and felt his shoulders relax from their tensed position. He felt his face calm slowly and exhaled, saying, "You're right, Sam, sorry, I just want everything to be perfect. For Kurt. I don't want anything to worry him or to go wrong. I just want this to be the perfect day for him."

Sam looked at Blaine like he was crazy. "Blaine, no matter what happens, this day is gonna be perfect because you guys are getting married. Nothing small like bad weather or spilled champagne can ruin that. And, just for the record, the weather is awesome today. So, you already have one less thing to worry about."

Blaine knew that Sam was right, but he couldn't help that every happy event in his and Kurt's life together would from now on be bittersweet. He knew it, and so did Sam. So did everyone else. No matter how joyous the occasion, (and what could be filled with more joy than their wedding day?) in the back of everyone's mind would be the painful truth that Kurt would soon be gone, that his days were numbered, that the minutes of his life were ticking backwards on an all-too-short countdown. Blaine grappled with it daily, though he attempted valiantly to hide this from Kurt. The last thing he wanted was Kurt worrying about Blaine's wellbeing while trying to reconcile the though of his own mortality.

Sam placed an arm around Blaine's shoulders; he didn't have to be psychic to know what was going through his pal's mind. "I know, man. I know."


End file.
